St. Patrick's Day on the streets of Denver

If you can read these words on your computer screen today, you have shamed St. Patrick. Also, you were probably not anywhere near Colfax last night. Fortunately for you, that is exactly where a pad of paper and I were, so we bring you an after-the-fact-live blog. Or a tape-delayed blog, if you will.

Disclaimer: Last year's heroic effort by Managing Editor Jonathan Shikes and friends belongs in the live blog hall of fame. If there were such a thing. What follows cannot begin to match that for all around awesomeness (or drunkenness). It does, however, begin at 8pm, which is exactly the time Shikes was "chased out by a blond who alleged that we called her a 'whore.'"

8pm I am finishing dinner and wondering if I should bother leaving my apartment. It's been a long day. Maybe I'll just watch episode 3 of parenthood and go to bed early. Or maybe I'll start drinking.

Really, there was never any doubt. I write for Westword.

8:30 I am drinking a beer and filling out my bracket. I'm taking Cornell over Temple, for some reason.

9:00 My girlfriend comes home from bar tending school with her friend, which means it's time to start tapping my inner O'Kiernan. A search for "Irish" on Lala yields 508 results, all called things like "Irish Moods," "Irish Dance," "Irish Pride," "Irish Coffee." I go for "Irish Jig Music," by an artist called "Irish Songs Music," which has some issues with syntax.

9:04 I am being offered irish crème on the rocks. But these people just got back from bar tending school, so I'm rejecting that and asking for something more complicated.

9:05 I am given a drink whose name they can't remember and won't reveal the ingredients of. As it turns out: "Cement mixer" and "Irish crème and lime juice." It's supposed to curdle in your mouth and be disgusting. For some reason it did not curdle. Still, practical joke shots are mean, just in general.

9:26 The plan was to go the Irish Snug, but the line wraps around the block. Probably should have seen this coming.

9:41 We settle for Tooey's across the street. They're already out of the whiskey they have on special, and it wasn't even Catholic whiskey. We get a round of Guinness. They're served in the can. There is some sort of Wii bowling tournament going on here. Overall St. Patrick's Day sprit level: 2 out of a possible 10.

10:07: One of the Wii bowler dudes is wearing a t-shirt with a sequined elastic bow-tie.

10:09 The rest of our friends arrive and we do a round of car bombs. They serve them in squat little shot cups with the Bailey's sitting on top of the Guinness. So they curdled before we could drink them. The bartender claims this is how they are served in Boston. Fuck Boston.

10:43 Looking to dodge the crowds, we head to Gabor's. There is not dodging the crowds on St. Patrick's Day. Standing room only. On the plus side, we are standing by the jukebox and I notice they have the Hot Congress Comp in there. Badass.

10:49 There's only one bartender. Conversely, many people are trying to buy booze. I'm trying to get something called a green margarita, which they had listed as a St. Patrick's Day Special.

11:00 I actually get my green margarita. It's clear but with a sort of cloud of green settling on the bottom, which I assume is food coloring. My bartending-school-attending girlfriend suggests that it is probably a certain honeydew liquor. I think that's giving this drink too much credit.

11:16 Some girl walks in what appears to be a peter pan costume. At the same time, a table starts cheering because it's someone's birthday and the whole bar gets in on it. Yeah for camaraderie.

11:30 Walking on 13th just past Ogden we pass a pair of grubby, sunken looking dudes. One of them gestures for a hi-five, which I give him. My friend thinks this is the sort of person you don't want to hi-five unless you have Purell.

11:38 At this point, we're tired of waiting twenty minutes for a drink at fucking Gabor's, of all places, and instead we're trying to just get some beer to bring back to the apartment. An employee in 7-11 steers us away from buying an 18 pack of 3.2% Bud Light and we head to Paul's Liquor.

11:40 There are three people in front of the Papa Johns with the marquee that says, "Our dough's so fresh Will Smith gets jealous." Two of them are standing up, but the blonde is lying on the sidewalk, her hair draped over the curb. Her friend tries to help her up, but it kind of seems like she'd rather stay there.

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11:45 I am holding my pen in my mouth. While we are checking out, a guy walks up to me and asks if I need a light for it. He is dead serious and very polite, if a little wobbly, about this offer. People are getting noticeably sloppy across the board.

11:55 A block from our apartment, a very purposeful man in a black leprechaun hat asks us for a Schlitz. We keep walking.

11:58 We reach the apartment. I didn't even last until midnight at the bars. Oh well -- Happy St. Patrick's Day.

Kiernan Maletsky is Westword's music editor. His writing has appeared in alt-weeklies around the country as well as Miley Cyrus's mom's Twitter feed.